


The Flower That Smiles Today

by songlin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Fingerfucking, First Time, Insecurity, M/M, Nipple Play, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-08
Updated: 2012-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:18:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songlin/pseuds/songlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am selfish, willful and astonishingly possessive. My moods are mercurial at the best of times. I understand that for others, this can be difficult to bear. There will be days I can’t stand to be touched and days I won’t let you leave my bed. But I will never not want you. Never again. You have to know that now, John, before we begin. If you let me have you, I will need you always."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flower That Smiles Today

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Robert Herrick for inspiration on the title, as I am both lazy and bad at titles.

Sherlock is stuck on a problem.

It’s not the kind of problem he enjoys, either, the kind of problem that makes his cheeks flush and his thoughts race in beautiful, symmetrical lines like a Bach violin concerto. No, it’s a problem in the normal-person sense of the word, the sort most humans pick at like a scab. Sherlock feels it in the twist in his stomach, the tenseness in his hamstrings, the tightness in his trapezius, the deep trough in his glabella that lines up perfectly with the bones of his nose. That’s good at least. Symmetry. Sherlock appreciates symmetry.

The problem is John Watson, and that Sherlock has just realized John would dearly love to change the nature of their relationship. Has been thinking about it for months. And that _is_ a problem, because all of Sherlock’s data on romantic relationships indicate that he is a very poor candidate for one.

He has thought about it before. He even tried it, once, while he was at uni. Regardless of what certain Women and consulting criminals may think, Sherlock Holmes is not a virgin. The boy’s name was Victor. He was bright, beautiful and mildly interesting, but it ended when Victor told him he was insane and that they had the unhealthiest relationship since Charles and Diana. Victor had died of an overdose two years later, and Sherlock had spent the week after he found out on the last coke binge of his life. He had needed the extra energy to help him delete what needed deleting, to cauterize his open wounds and demolish the bridges into territories he had no need to revisit.

So it was with no small amount of horror that Sherlock woke one morning in the forests of his mind he had thought long burnt down, stumbling through them in a drunken daze, the sound and smell of _John John John_ overloading his senses. They were overwhelming inside his mind, much stronger than they were in real life. _Are they? I haven’t examined them thoroughly enough to be sure. If I pushed John’s jumper up under his arms and pressed my face into his sternum and_ breathed, _taking in how he smells and listening to his heart beat and his breath hitch, the same way it does when you’ve said something terribly clever out of nowhere and it takes him by surprise, would everything be--_

No. Stop. Shut it down. Useless to conjecture; the information is pointless, as Sherlock will never be able to test his hypotheses.

Focus on the moment, then. Sherlock staying in his head can be dangerous when he’s like this. Volatile. Uncontrolled. Sherlock detests lack of control, so he opens his eyes and drags himself back to the surface.

He is lying on the sofa in his pyjamas and the blue bathrobe (the one that John likes to-- _no stop I told you)_ , stretched out with his arms behind his head. John is at the shop and Mrs. Hudson is visiting with Mrs. Turner next door. Sherlock is alone, then. That’s good, because it means he can process out loud, which is excellent.

“You cannot know the things I think, John,” he says. “You’d like them. You’d love them, maybe; I don’t know how your mind works. Not like that at least. But--sociopaths are for solving crimes. We’re not to be trusted with beautiful things. Well, beautiful things, maybe, but not...good things. We’re like...wind and water eroding them over time.”

There is silence while Sherlock formulates his next sentence. It does not usually take him a long time to do this, but this is a different sort of conversation.

“So you mustn’t let me...have you. You’ve thought about it. You’re thinking about it now.” Sherlock stretches his head back, craning his neck towards the ceiling. “I wouldn’t mind it. Having you. But you would, after a while. You don’t realize how much you would, and it’s too good with you here the way we are, so I shan’t chance spoiling that by letting me have you.” He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. “You understand.”

“I...think I do.”

Sherlock bolts upright. John is leaning against the kitchen table, a bag of groceries behind him.

“Oh,” says Sherlock, his voice coming out a bit hoarser that he meant it to. “Sorry. Thought you were...out.”

John bites his lip. “Er, yeah, I could guess that. You... _do_ know I’ve been back for half an hour.”

Sherlock shrugs. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“Ah.” John rolls his shoulders nervously, cracking a few tendons. “So...”

“You heard then.”

“Er. Yes. I mean, not if--if you don’t want me to have...”

“You heard or you didn’t,” Sherlock says evenly. “Nothing to be done now.” He positively launches himself off the couch and towards his bedroom.

John gives chase. “Sherlock--Sherlock, wait, I--”

“If you heard me, you’ll know why I have to--”

“Sherlock, _stop.”_

John seizes Sherlock’s arms, pushes him into the wall and pins him.

Sherlock could probably fight him off, but he’s too busy inside his head, chasing down all the stray thoughts that John’s hands on his shoulders are conjuring up.

_I could take him right now. He_ does _smell more when I’m this close. What does his stomach smell like? The small of his back? The nape of his neck? What do they taste like? I wonder if he’d like to wind his fingers through my hair, or if he’d like to watch while I sink to my knees and take the zipper of his jeans in my teeth and--_

_NO._

_STOP._

Sherlock’s eyes are focused on the ceiling. “Let me go,” he grounds out through gritted teeth.

“Nope.”

“Let. Me. _Go.”_

“No. I listened to you, and now you’re going to listen to--hey! Stop that! Get out of your head and _listen to me.”_

This catches Sherlock by surprise. Is it so obvious? It can't be. Mustn't. He frowns.

“I’m not in my head.”

John rolls his eyes. “Of course not. Not anymore, at least. Now, are you listening to me?”

Scowling, Sherlock gives a terse nod.

“Good. Now. You do understand I’m a grown man. Fully capable of making my own decisions.”

Sherlock huffs. “Yes, but you’d be making your decisions based on poorly gathered information interpreted with a serious bias, and--”

“No, answer my question. _Am I a grown man fully capable of making my own decisions?”_

“Yes,” Sherlock mutters.

“Exactly,” John says firmly. “For example, right now I am about to make a decision. You are allowed to refuse, if that’s what you want _and only_ if that’s what _you want._ What you are not allowed to do is decide what _I_ want. You don’t know me that well, Sherlock Holmes. Understood?”

A muscle in Sherlock’s jaw is working. He nods.

“Good,” says John, more softly now.

When John’s hands come up from Sherlock’s shoulders and cup the back of his head, Sherlock wishes he wanted to push him off, storm into his room and slam the door like a teenager. He knows that’s what he _should_ do, but he doesn’t, because John’s breath is hot against his face and it’s... _lovely_. Sherlock had no idea that his philtrum was so sensitive. He shivers. John inhales, sharp and quick.

“Okay?” he murmurs.

Sherlock’s lips part, and for probably the first time in his life he has absolutely no control over what he is about to say.

“God, yes,” he whispers.

John’s lips are gentle. He doesn’t insist, doesn’t try to force his way in, although Sherlock can feel how badly he wants to _(part my lips with his tongue, swim into my mouth and through my bloodstream, he doesn’t know he’s there, already, every atom),_ but John is a good man, and he does not pry.

Sherlock, however, is not a good man. He’s fast losing track of what his body is doing and drowning out the reasons why this is wrong, and that is why it’s Sherlock’s hands that grip John tight round the waist and pull him flush against his body. They both break then, gasping around each other’s mouths, vying for air. Then Sherlock dives back in, hungry, desperate for the clashing teeth and the taste of assailing someone else’s mouth, being _allowed_ to.

Sherlock is holding fast to his last tendrils of wit, the ones that whisper _no stop he’ll break_ while the rest of him is screaming out the second movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata so loudly it is roaring in his ears and making his heart simply ache with pathos. Those scraps of sense are all that’s keeping him from tearing into John, from ripping him open and climbing inside and never coming out again. John, for his part, is going terribly limp and boneless against Sherlock’s chest, hands still on his shoulders, fisting in the back of his robe, _tugging,_ like he’s trying to pull Sherlock into him so tightly that he sinks into John, osmosing--

_You shouldn’t. You have to stop. You’ll spoil everything, you stupid man! Shouldn’t--listen to me, LISTEN, stop, STOP--_

“Wait,” Sherlock gasps. “Wait!”

John grimaces. “I’m--okay, okay, I’m stopping. Stopping. Look, this is me-- _God_ \--no, yes, I’m stopping.”

He is quite breathless, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment while he releases Sherlock’s robe and lets his hands drift to his sides. What Sherlock wants to do now is grab his hands, put them on his hips and order him to never move them again. Instead, he drops his head back into the wall and sighs.

John brushes a thumb over Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock’s voice breaks, and he allows himself a moment to enjoy it before he snatches John’s wrist and leads his hand back down to his side.

“Wanted to do that,” says John, voice rough.

“You can’t.”

“I can,” John says patiently. “But you think I shouldn’t.”

Sherlock’s lips tighten. “Precisely.”

“Right. Probably right there, and I know why, mostly, but I want to hear it. Straight from the source.”

Sherlock grimaces. “I am...not good.”

John nods. “Okay. Fair enough. Nobody is, really.”

“You are,” says Sherlock, and it’s the second thing he’s said tonight that he doesn’t entirely want to.

The corners of John’s eyes crinkle. Sherlock wants to beg him to keep them there, wait until Sherlock can find a pencil and can sketch the way he looks just then to capture for all posterity what John Watson looks like when Sherlock tells him how good he is.

“I am selfish, willful and astonishingly possessive. My moods are mercurial at the best of times. I understand that for others, this can be...difficult to bear.”

John laughs. “So, nothing would change.”

Sherlock shakes his head vehemently. _“Everything_ would change. There will be days I can’t stand to be touched and days I won’t let you leave my bed. But I will never not want you. Never again. You have to know that now, John, before we begin. If you let me have you, I will need you always.”

Sherlock has stopped speaking in hypotheticals. This was a deliberate shift on his part. John does not seem to have noticed. Sherlock wonders if he was _ever_ speaking in hypotheticals or if it was always a certainty in his mind.

John’s expression is unreadable. Under any other circumstances perhaps Sherlock could interpret it, but with his pupils blown wide and cheeks flushed everything is impossible to analyze with currently archived data. “Huh. God. That’s...wow. That is a lot to...take in. Yeah.”

Sherlock’s face twists. He turns half away. “I knew you--”

“No, Sherlock, no, it’s--” John catches his wrist and pulls him back around. “It’s fine.” He smiles. “It’s all fine. I told you.” His looks away, then back again, determined. Decided. “As a matter of fact, I think it’s wonderful.”

Sherlock’s brow smooths for the first time in hours. The tension is ebbing out of him in measures, his shoulders relaxing, facial muscles easing back into their natural positions.

“It will never be the same.”

John laughs. “You know me. You say dangerous, and...”

Sherlock makes a small, pained sound, seizes the back of John’s neck, and kisses him.

And now Sherlock is entirely senseless, with nothing left in him to say _shouldn’t_. John is making these beautiful needy sounds into his mouth, which is good, and they’re pressed hard against each other, Sherlock gripping John’s shoulders and John with his arms wound round Sherlock’s waist, fingers flexing against his scapulae.

“Christ,” John breathes, when Sherlock dips his head to trail a line of kisses down to his neck. “You’re amazing, _fantastic,_ _how_ are you so _good?”_

Sherlock would retort, but he’s putting his mouth to use feeling out the definition of John’s clavicle. His shirt is in the way.

Time to do something about that, then.

“Bed,” Sherlock growls. “Clothes. Off.”

John shudders. “Jesus Christ, yes.”

They’re only five steps from Sherlock’s door, which is good, because they’re kissing again and trying to get each other’s shirts off at the same time, all while trying to walk. Sherlock’s blue silk robe winds up on the doorknob, John’s striped shirt somewhere in the vicinity of the dresser, Sherlock’s pyjama top on the bedside table, and their trousers in a puddle next to Sherlock’s bed.

John collapses against the pillows and Sherlock crawls over him on all fours. He moves to return to what he was doing before, but John stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Wait. Just--wait, I want to look at you.”

Sherlock eases back onto his knees. John sits up a little, leans against the headboard and stares at Sherlock, slightly agog.

“You’re...God. Just... _fuck,_ you’re beautiful.”

Sherlock sighs, shuts his eyes and tilts his head back. He cannot look too closely at John just yet. He’s saving that for later, when they’re curled against each other in the damp sheets. Then he will look over every inch of John Watson and memorize it for the day he wakes up and John is shouting that he’s insane.

Now, John is running his hands up Sherlock’s ribcage, and Sherlock is settling his weight over John’s thighs. One of John’s thumbs brushes over a nipple, just tentatively, experimenting. Sherlock draws in a breath in a sharp hiss. John’s eyebrows twitch up. His tongue darts out briefly, just wetting the bow of his lip.

“God,” he breathes. “That’s...wow.”

Sherlock’s hands settle on John’s shoulders. “Sensitive.”

John nods, an amused little quirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “Getting that, yeah.”

“Then _do something about it.”_

“I-- _shit_. Yes. _Yes.”_

John winds his hands around the backs of Sherlock’s knees and tugs him closer, just enough to enable him to lean forward and press his lips to Sherlock’s nipple.

_It’s like electricity,_ Sherlock thinks, as his hips jerk and his erection grinds into John’s with a shock of pleasure. They both gasp, and John’s lips are suddenly not on Sherlock anymore, which is unacceptable. He snarls and pushes John’s head back into his chest.

_“Do not stop.”_

John is a soldier, so he’s good at orders.

_Yes,_ Sherlock thinks, _electricity. This is completing a circuit. It’s going to burn us both out, for sure, but won’t it be beautiful as we do?_

“John. _John.”_ He cups a hand around the back of his head and draws him away, which feels like cutting off a limb, but is necessary. “You’re sure.”

John laughs. “You’re barking. I am _beyond_ sure. I can’t remember the last thing I have been this sure about. I am absolutely, positively _sure.”_

Sherlock takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Good. I’m getting lubricant.”

John gasps. “Oh God.”

Sherlock rolls off the bed and scrabbles through the drawer in his bedside table. _Where where where GOD WHERE of all times--ha!_ He snatches up the tube and crawls back onto the bed. John is lying back against the pillows again, lazily fisting his cock.

“Stop that,” Sherlock says sternly. “You’re not coming yet.”

John wordlessly shakes his head and stops. Sherlock kneels between his calves and squeezes his knee. His legs fall further open without any additional indication, and that is _beautiful,_ just _perfect_.

John’s got his hands balled up in the sheets, rhythmically squeezing and releasing. “Come on, do it,” he demands. “Do it, I want you to.”

Sherlock may not be good, but he is not cruel, so he obliges. John winces at first when Sherlock pushes in his first finger, because it’s cold and it’s been a while _(three years, at a guess; certainly before Afghanistan)_ , but Sherlock is careful and slow, and when he crooks his finger and John arches his back and swears up a blue streak it just about stops his heart.

“God, oh _Christ,_ _oh_ _shit yes,”_ John pants as Sherlock slides in a second finger. “Your hands--they’re gorgeous, you know, when I watch you play the violin I--I imagine--”

Sherlock chokes back a gasp. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“Ah--Jesus _Christ!_ Your fingers--long. Thin. And you’re very-- _God_ \--so good with them. _Very_ good, I’m seeing.”

His hips are starting to move in slow circles. It’s mesmerizing. Sherlock can’t decide whether he wants to watch John’s hips or his mouth, the flush on his chest or the one across his face.

“Keep talking,” he commands.

John shudders. “Your voice. Especially when you’re--like that. Ordering me to do something. Takes my breath away when you--talk like that.”

Sherlock leans forward and ghosts his breath along the shell of John’s ear. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says in a low voice, and eases in a third finger.

John gives out a strangled cry and clamps his fingers into Sherlock’s shoulder so hard that for a second Sherlock thinks he’s come already. But a moment later it’s obvious he hasn’t. He’s driving himself down onto Sherlock’s hand, reduced to broken cries and curses, and Sherlock is stroking lube down the length of his cock because all of a sudden he needs to be inside John _right now._

He withdraws his fingers.

“No, _no,_ why are you--oh.”

John has caught on.

_“Oh.”_

“Are you alright?” Sherlock manages to ask.

“No, but I will be if you will _just fuck me already,”_ John snarls.

“You’re fantastic,” Sherlock breathes, hiking John’s legs up further. “You are _wonderful.”_

“Enough with the fucking sweet talk, you need--”

“--I know what I bloody well--”

“--will you just _oh Jesus fucking Christ.”_

Sherlock has gritted his teeth and thrust in with one smooth glide.

He is very glad for his extraordinary self-control, because everything is _hot/close/tight/smell of lust (lubricant, sweat, pre-ejaculate, saliva, pheromones)/John/John/John_ and _like hell_ is he going to get this far only to come the moment it begins.

“Oh my God,” John chokes out. He throws a hand across his forehead. “Fuck.”

“Are you alright?” Sherlock repeats, looking determinedly at the ceiling.

“For the--yes, God damn it, Sherlock, I am _very fucking alright!_ I’ll be even better if you’ll--”

_“Yes,_ I _know,”_ Sherlock gasps, and moves.

The words stop being words very quickly after that, even the swearing. Sometimes there are names, which Sherlock always thought looked ridiculous on paper but turns out to be marvelous. He has never heard anything more beautiful than John Watson saying _“Sherlock”_ with his voice desperate and needy and an uptick at the end, a rising inflection signaling that Sherlock is doing something very, very good. He’s _seen_ something more beautiful, and that’s the starburst of scar tissue on John’s left shoulder that he’s mapping with his tongue, or maybe the contrast between his open mouth with pink lips parted and the tight furrows in his brow, or how his hair sticks to his temples, sweaty and dark.

John lets out a whine and another cry of _“Sherlock,”_ and Sherlock is just _this_ short of coming, so he forces out a “tell me when you’re--” and John is saying _“now,”_ so Sherlock wraps a hand around John’s cock and he actually _shouts_.

_“Sherlock!”_

Sherlock doesn’t say anything. He is lost, drowned, twenty feet underwater in the all-encompassing, full-body, nerve-shorting sensations of the most intense sensory experience of his life. He has no idea what he says. That’s beyond his scope of view now. There is so much to take in, and it’s not going to last long enough, none of it is, so he needs it all _now, all_ of it.

Afterwards, Sherlock decides he will put off memorizing John Watson until tomorrow morning. Instead, he lies on his side next to John, winds his long limbs  around his body and buries his face in John’s chest.

John’s body is shaking with silent laughter. John’s laughter is very contagious, and under other circumstances Sherlock might join in, but he’s not fully in control of his abdominal muscles at the moment.

“Unbelievable,” John says. “Jesus Christ, that was...unbelievable.”

“You’re making fun,” Sherlock croaks. Did he scream? He might have. His throat feels like he did.

“No! No, no, no. Definitely not. Believe me, I’m not.”

Sherlock makes a satisfied little hum and nuzzles at John’s neck.

John chuckles. “My God. You’re a cuddler.”

“Am _not.”_

“Oh, really? What’s this then?”

“‘M tired. System recently flooded with oxytocin, phenethylamine, endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, prolactin. Prompts need for physical affection. Hence, closeness.”

“I love you too.”

Silence.

“Cut that out, you berk, I know you’re not asleep yet.”

Sherlock grins. John can feel it against his skin.

“Right. Here are your choices. One, we wait until you’re willing to move and change the sheets on this bed, and sleep down here. Two, we wait until you’re willing to move, go upstairs, sleep in my bed and change these sheets in the morning.”

“No.”

“Don’t remember mentioning that option.”

“No.”

“Sherlock, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but sleeping in the wet spot is generally considered--”

Sherlock jabs him in the sternum.

_“Ow!”_

There is a brief bout of wrestling and wriggling, during which they switch places and rearrange themselves back into a mirror image of their previous position.

“There,” Sherlock declares. “I don’t care about ‘the wet spot.’”

John chuckles and kisses the top of Sherlock’s head. “Fine. Yes. We’re not moving. We good?”

Sherlock smiles. “Good.”

It wouldn’t last forever. But this might be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, there are two others more or less in this 'verse: [ The Closest to Heaven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/373863) and [Where the Poppies Blow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/387881).


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